unit
1
Careers
AT A GLANCE
at a glance
Classwork – Course Book
Lesson 1
Each lesson (excluding case
studies) is about 45 to 60
minutes. This does not include
time spent going through
homework.
Lesson 2
Starting up
Students talk about their level of ambition and
say what makes for a successful career.
Vocabulary: Career moves
Students look at typical word combinations and
verbs used with career.
Reading: Be aware of your online image
Students read an article about how their
social-networking profile could damage their
employment prospects.
Listening: Changing jobs
Students listen to an interview with Melissa
Foux, Finance Director of a UK television
business.
Lesson 3
Language review: Modals 1: ability, requests
and offers
Students look at modals used for ability,
requests and offers (can, could and would) and
do exercises based around a job interview.
Skills: Telephoning: making contact
Students listen to some calls and learn how to
get through to who they want to speak to, leave
messages, etc.
Further work
Practice File
Vocabulary (page 4)
Practice exercises:
Vocabulary 1 & 2
(DVD-ROM)
i-Glossary
(DVD-ROM)
Text bank
(pages 116–119)
Resource bank: Listening
(page 189)
Practice exercises:
Listening
(DVD-ROM)
Practice File
Language review (page 5)
Practice exercises:
Language review 1 & 2
(DVD-ROM)
ML Essential Business
Grammar and Usage
(Unit 27)
Resource bank: Speaking
(page 177)
Practice exercises: Skills
(DVD-ROM)
Lesson 4
Each case study is about
1 to 11/2 hours.
Case study: YouJuice
Students choose the right candidate for an
internal promotion within an international drinks
company.
Case study commentary
(DVD-ROM)
Resource bank: Writing
(page 204)
Practice File
Writing (page 6)
For a fast route through the unit focusing mainly on speaking skills, just use the underlined sections.
For one-to-one situations, most parts of the unit lend themselves, with minimal adaptation, to use with individual
students. Where this is not the case, alternative procedures are given.
8
unit 1 •• Careers
business brief
BUSINESS BRIEF
Reports of the death of the traditional career have been greatly exaggerated. Despite the growth
of outsourcing (buying in services that were previously performed by a company’s employees from
outside the organisation) and teleworking by freelancers working from home communicating via
the Internet, most professional people still go to what is recognisably a job in a building that is
recognisably an office. The average tenure, the length of time that people spend in a particular
job, has remained unchanged (at about seven years) for two decades.
From the point of view of the human resources (HR) department of a large company, managing
people’s careers can still be seen in the traditional activities of selection procedures and
recruitment, managing remuneration (how much people are paid), and working with department
managers on performance reviews: annual or more frequent meetings with employees to tell them
how well they are doing and how they may progress further on the career ladder. The HR department
will also be involved with training and professional development of the company’s staff.
A company’s HR department may also be involved in making people redundant. Redundancies
may be the result of an economic downturn with reduced demand for the company’s goods or
services, but they may follow a decision by a company to de-layer (to reduce the number of
management levels) and downsize. It may offer outplacement services, advice to people on how
they can find another job, perhaps after some retraining.
A manager made redundant in this way may become what Charles Handy calls a portfolio worker,
offering their services to a number of clients. Some managers describe themselves as consultants
but would prefer to be working in a salaried job in an organisation like the one they have been
forced to leave.
Others may enjoy their new-found freedom and embrace the flexibility that it offers. (Companies
too may talk about flexibility when they use the services of freelancers in this way, rather than
relying on salaried employees.) Freelancers have to maintain their degree of employability
by keeping up with the latest trends and skills in their profession or industry, for example by
attending short courses. They may complain that working outside an organisation gives them
fewer opportunities to learn these new skills. For many salaried employees, on the other hand,
developing one’s career in an (enlightened) organisation is a process of give-and-take – the
environment they work in allows them to keep their skills up to speed.
Read on
The section on Careers, jobs and management on FT.com is a good up-to-date source of
information on this area: http://www.exec-appointments.com/
Charles Handy: The Elephant and the Flea, Hutchinson, 2001
Fifty Lessons: Managing your Career (Harvard Lessons Learned), Harvard Business Press, 2007
Jane Yarnall: Strategic Career Management: Developing Your Talent (The HR Series), ButterworthHeinemann, 2008
9
unit 1 •• Careers
lesson notes
Warmer
LESSON NOTES
•
Write the word career in big letters at the top of the
board.
•
Ask students to suggest different stages in a typical
career using expressions such as: go to school, go
to university, get qualifications in …, get a job in a
company, move to another company, retire, etc. Do
this as a quick-fire activity – don’t spend too long on
it.
1 e 2 c 3 a 4 g 5 b 6 d 7 f
C
•
One-to-one
If this is your first lesson with a one-to-one student,
this will be a good opportunity to get to know them
better and to supplement the information in the
needs analysis, if there was one.
Overview
• Ask the students to look at the Overview section on
page 6. Tell them a little about the things you will be
doing, using the table on page 8 of this book as a
guide. Tell them which sections you will be covering
in this lesson and which in later lessons.
Quotation
•
•
Write the quotation on the board and ask students
to discuss it briefly in pairs. Make sure students
understand that in one sense, work has the same
meaning as a job, but in another sense, work also
means making an effort.
With the whole class, ask pairs for their opinions. Can
they think of examples (without naming names!) of
people they have known who avoid work on the job?
What about people who are hard-working on the job?
Vocabulary: Career moves
Students look at typical noun combinations
(collocations) with career, verbs used with the word
career, and verbs used with other career-related nouns
(operating verbs).
•
•
If it’s the first lesson with the group, point out that
memorising blocks of language – typical word
combinations – is an important part of the learning
process.
A
•
Do this as a quick-fire activity with the whole class.
1 c 2 d 3 b 4 a 5 f 6 e
Starting up
Students talk about their level of ambition and say what
makes for a successful career.
Get students to do the exercise in pairs or small
groups. Circulate, monitor and assist if necessary.
B
If this is your first lesson with the group and
they have done a needs analysis, this is a good
opportunity to get more background information
about people’s jobs and their English-learning needs
in relation to their future careers. You may have
students whose careers depend on improving their
level of English.
•
Get students to discuss the points in groups of three
or four. Circulate, monitor and assist if necessary,
especially with career-related vocabulary.
C
CD1.1–1.3
Get students to look at question B and listen once or
twice to the three speakers. Elicit their answers.
Person 1
middle
Person 2
beginning
Person 3
end
A
•
•
•
After the groups have discussed each point, get a
spokesperson for each group to give the views of the
group. Relate each group’s points to those of other
groups. Deal tactfully with the non-career-orientated
students.
Praise good language points and work on some areas
that need it, especially in relation to career-related
language.
B
•
10
•
Get students to do this exercise in pairs.
CD1.1–1.3
Get students to look at question C and listen again to
the three speakers. Elicit their answers.
Person 1
career break, career move
Person 2
career opportunities, career path
Person 3
career plan, career ladder
D
•
Get students to do this exercise in pairs or small
groups. Tell them they can use a good bilingual
dictionary or a monolingual one such as the Longman
Active Study Dictionary. Circulate, monitor and assist
if necessary.
unit 1 •• Careers
lesson notes
1 have
You may prefer to discuss the first question with the
whole group, writing answers on the board, before
asking students to work on the second question in
pairs.
•
Bring the group together to compare students’
answers.
2 take
3 make
4 offer
5 decide
6 climb
B
•
E
•
LESSON NOTES
•
Students do the exercise in pairs or small groups.
Circulate, monitor and assist if necessary.
Odd items out:
The idea behind this type of exercise is to get
students to scan the article without trying to
understand everything at the first attempt and to
spot similar concepts, even if they are expressed
differently. They can do this individually or in the
same pairs as in Exercise A.
1 70%
1 a training course
2 Facebook, Twitter
2 progress
3 P
eter Cullen: Microsoft; Farhan Yasin:
Careerbuilder.co.uk
3 a part-time job
4 a mistake
5 a pension
6 an office job
C
•
F
•
b) Facebook profile ‘could damage job prospects’
Ask students to do this exercise in pairs or small
groups.
1 make a fortune
2 work flexitime
D
•
3 earn commission
4 get a promotion
5 do part-time work
6 take early retirement
Reading: Be aware of your online image
A
•
Pre-teach the following vocabulary: Facebook profile
– the information about yourself that you share on
Facebook; online image – your ‘personality’ on the
Internet as shown by pictures of you, comments you
write, and so on; online reputation – the opinion
people have of you because of what they see on the
Internet; faux pas – (from French) an embarrassing
mistake; personal brand – the image you want
people to have of you.
This requires closer reading of the text to link the
ideas. Get students to read through the article again
and identify any words they don’t understand. If you
have time, encourage them to guess at the meaning
by looking at the context or to look the words up
themselves in a dictionary.
They can make your career because a strong online
image could help you land your dream job. They
can break your career because a huge number
of employers take action against staff for writing
negative comments on their social-networking
page.
i-Glossary
Students read an article about how their socialnetworking profile could damage their employment
prospects.
This requires an understanding of the main idea
of the article, which is found in the first sentence.
Students can work individually or in pairs.
E
•
Students work in pairs to write a list of things they
should not do on their social-networking site. Follow
up with a whole-group discussion to see if everyone
had the same ideas.
F
•
Students do the exercise in pairs or small groups.
After the discussion, ask for a show of hands for and
against using social-networking sites during work
hours.
Text bank (pages 116–119)
11
unit 1 •• Careers
lesson notes
Listening: Changing jobs
Students listen to an interview with Melissa Foux,
Finance Director of CSC Media Limited.
A
CD1.4
LESSON NOTES
•
Before playing the first part of the interview, get
students to read the three questions in this section.
•
•
Play the first part of the interview through once.
Once students have decided on their answers, play
the track again, pausing after each answer.
1 C
SC Media Ltd, part of the Chart Show
Channels Group, is the largest independent
television business in the UK. It has a mixture
of 16 channels, including music, children’s and
movie channels.
E
•
Students do the exercise in small groups. Circulate,
monitor and assist if necessary.
•
Ask a few students to share with the class the
answers of other members of their group.
Resource bank: Listening (page 189)
Language review: Modals 1: ability,
requests and offers
Students look at modals used for ability, requests and
offers, and do exercises.
•
Check that students know about modal verbs and
their characteristics.
•
Modals are verbs like may, might, can, could,
etc. They don’t change with different persons (for
example, I can, you can, he can). The ones they will
see here are can, could and would.
•
Get students to match the functions with the
examples in the Language review box.
2 S
he was the Finance Director for a chocolatepudding business.
3 Because the basic skills you need are the same.
B
•
•
•
CD1.5
Before playing the next part of the interview, get
students to read the text.
Play the second part of the interview through once
and ask students to listen for the answers, but not
write them. Elicit answers from the whole class and
ask students to complete the text.
1 c 2 a 3 b
A
•
Get students to work in pairs to rearrange the words.
Circulate, monitor and assist if necessary.
•
Then get them to work out whether they are
requests, offers or asking about ability.
Play the recording again and have students check
their answers.
1 Can I get you a drink? (b)
1 chemistry
2 Could I confirm your e-mail address? (a)
2 different
3 Can you use spreadsheets? (c)
3 internship
4 Can you speak any other languages? (c)
4 accountancy
5 C
ould you tell us more about your present job?
(a)
5 understanding
6 Could you tell me your current salary? (a)
6 experience
C
•
•
CD1.6
•
9 Would you like some more tea? (b)
Check answers quickly with the class.
CD1.7
Play the final part of the interview. Elicit the answer
from the class.
c) How would you advise people who are starting
their careers?
12
8 When can you start? (a)
Play the third part of the interview.
1 c 2 a 3 b
D
7 W
ould you let us know your decision as soon as
possible? (a)
•
Discuss students’ answers, clarifying any difficulties.
B
•
Get students in pairs to match the questions and
answers.
•
Circulate, monitor and assist if necessary, for
example by explaining currently and notice period.
unit 1 •• Careers
lesson notes
1 What is the purpose of the call?
a 6 b 3 c 7 d 1 e 2 f 9 g 5 h 4 i 8
Phone call 1: To ask about a job advert
Get students in pairs to practise reading the
exchanges with good intonation. Circulate, monitor
and assist if necessary.
Phone call 2: To tell Giovanna that he can’t
make the training course
•
Point out that the politeness in the requests is in the
intonation: none of them involve please.
2 Do the callers know each other?
•
Then get one or two pairs to perform some of the
exchanges for the whole class.
C
•
Get students to role-play the situation in parallel
pairs, following the instructions in the role play box.
Circulate and monitor.
C
•
LESSON NOTES
•
Phone call 3:To ask for a phone number
Phone call 1: No
Phone call 2: No
Phone call 3: Yes
CD1.8
Get students to listen again to the first call. Play
it several times if necessary, stopping after each
utterance to give them time to note it down.
Circulate, monitor and assist if necessary.
•
When the students have done the exercise once,
praise strong points and mention one or two things
that students should pay attention to when they
change roles.
•
Get students to change roles and again to role-play
the situation in parallel pairs. Circulate and monitor.
1 like, speak
•
Get one or two pairs to repeat their role play for the
whole class.
3 put you through
2 Hold on
4 Is that
Skills: Telephoning: making contact
5 Speaking
Students discuss how they use the telephone in
English. They then listen to three telephone calls, do
exercises based on them and role-play a telephone call
themselves.
•
Point out that the focus of this section is on making
contact and getting through.
•
With the whole group, get students to discuss the
calls they make and receive. Ask them what they
find particularly difficult and bring their attention
to points from the following activities that will help
them.
B
•
7 Could you give me
•
A
•
6 phoning about
Write the telephone expressions students come
up with on the board, preferably organising them
into groups, such as Getting through or Asking for
someone.
CD1.8–1.10
Get students to listen to the calls once or twice,
stopping after each call. Get them to describe the
purpose of each call and say in complete sentences
whether the callers know each other.
D
Go round the class and ask individual students to say
these expressions with friendly, polite intonation.
CD1.9
•
Before playing the recording, get students to read
the conversation and try to remember the words and
phrases that will go in the gaps.
•
Play the second call again and get students to write
the phrases, making sure that they get the exact
words – Could I speak to Giovanna … rather than
Can, etc.
1 Could I speak
7 tell
2 I’m afraid
8 make
3 take
9 call
4 message
10 back
5 This is
11 on
6 Could
13
unit 1 •• Careers
lesson notes
E
•
CD1.10
•
Allocate roles. Make sure that students are looking
at the correct page for their role. Check that students
with the A role understand that they will play two
different people in the two parts of Role play 1: Jamie
Vincent’s colleague and then Jamie Vincent. Students
with the B role card play themselves.
•
Get your students to role-play the first call in pairs.
Use telephone equipment if available; otherwise
get students to sit back-to-back. Circulate, monitor
and assist if necessary, especially with expressions
relating to making telephone calls and applying for
jobs.
•
Bring the class to order. Praise strong language
points and work on two or three points that require
it, getting individual students to say the improved
versions.
•
Then get one of the pairs to do the role play for the
whole class, integrating the improvements.
•
Get students to role-play the second call in pairs.
Circulate, monitor and assist if necessary.
•
Again, praise strong language points and work on
two or three points that require it, getting individual
students to say the improved versions.
•
Then get one of the pairs to do the role play for the
whole class, integrating the improvements.
•
Repeat the above steps for the second role play.
Check that students with the B role understand that
they will play two different people in the two parts
of Role play 2: Alex Frantzen’s colleague and then
Alex Frantzen. Students with the A role card play
themselves.
Play the third call again and get students to choose
the correct alternatives.
LESSON NOTES
1 you
2 word
3 let me have
4 engaged
5 here
6 catch
7 No problem
•
Get students to read the conversation in pairs, using
the underlined expressions. Then get one pair to read
the conversation for the whole class.
•
If time permits, get students to practise reading the
conversation with the alternative expressions, those
they did not underline, which are all correct usage.
Then get another pair to read the conversation for
the whole class.
F
14
•
Ask your students to practise, in pairs, the
expressions in the Useful language box. Circulate,
monitor and assist with pronunciation and friendly
intonation if necessary.
•
Then move on to Role play 1. Get students to look
at the job advert. Help with any difficulties of
understanding and then explain the background to
the role play.
Resource bank: Speaking (page 177)
unit 1 •• Careers
case study
YouJuice
Students choose a candidate for an internal promotion
within an international drinks company.
Stage 2: Profiles of the candidates
Divide the class into groups of three or four. Get
each group to analyse the written information about
all the candidates. Circulate, monitor and assist if
necessary. Get each group to appoint a spokesperson
who takes notes of the key points for each candidate,
without getting into comparing the merits of the
candidates.
•
Instruct the students to read silently the sections
entitled ‘Background’ and ‘A new appointment’,
including the extract of the job description giving
the qualities required of the successful candidate.
Circulate and answer any queries.
•
Play the recordings to the whole class, stopping
at the end of the recording for each candidate and
explaining any difficulties.
While students are reading, write the headings from
the left-hand column of the table below on the board.
With the whole class, elicit information to complete
the column on the right.
•
Alternatively, if the room is big enough and if
you have sufficient equipment, allocate one to
each group and get the groups to specialise in a
particular candidate, so, for example, one or two of
the groups listen only to Juana Ramos’s interview.
Circulate, monitor and assist if necessary. Then ask
a spokesperson for each group to summarise for the
whole class the interview that they listened to.
Company
YouJuice Inc.
Activity
Sells ready-to-drink juices all
over the world
Based in
Monterrey, Mexico but owned
by a large US corporation
Recent sales
performance
and reasons
for this
Poor (35 per cent below target)
because:
Stage 3: Task
•
The discussion in part 2 of the task does not, strictly
speaking, need a chairperson, but if you think this
would be useful to help structure the discussion,
appoint a chair. If this is the first role play you
have done with this class, choose a self-confident
student to run the whole-class meeting. Do this
while the group discussions below are still going on
and brief the chair on what they should do – invite
contributions, make sure everyone has a chance to
speak, make sure that each candidate is given proper
consideration, etc.
•
Working in groups, students discuss the relative
merits of each candidate for the job. Appoint a
different spokesperson in each group (i.e. not the
same person as in Stage 2 above) to note down the
main points of the discussion and the reasons for the
choice of candidate. Circulate, monitor and assist if
necessary.
•
Then get the whole class to discuss who should be
chosen for the job, under the direction of the chair if
you have decided to appoint one.
•
While the discussion is going on, note down strong
language points plus half a dozen points that need
improvement. Come back to them when a candidate
has been selected and the discussion is over. You
may want to concentrate on the language used to:
Sales reps not motivated
Strong competition
Previous manager – no clear
strategy
Limited market research done,
limited results from customer
database
Nature of
new sales
position
Increasing sales and developing
marketing strategies
Managing sales team – more
motivated and effective
Carrying out market research
Number of
candidates
3
Qualities
required
Good academic background
and relevant experience
Good organizational and
interpersonal skills
Numeracy skills and analytical
ability
Good linguistic ability
Must like travelling on business
•
Without pre-empting the discussion to come in
the task, clarify unfamiliar vocabulary and discuss
some of the points above with the whole class. For
example, ask students what it means to have strong
sales ability.
case study
•
Stage 1: Background
•
CD1.11–1.16
– describe people in the context of job interviews,
such as calm, relaxed, gets on well with others.
– make contrasts, for example: X was rather
aggressive at the interview whereas Y seemed
nervous.
15
unit 1 •• Careers
case study
One-to-one
case study
Use the points above as the basis for discussion
with your student. If there is time, you could go
on to ask them how recruitment is done in their
own organisation, whether internal promotion is
favoured over looking for external candidates, etc.
tudents can watch the Case study commentary on
S
the DVD-ROM.
Stage 4: Writing
•
The students write up the decision of the meeting
in e-mail form as if they were the head of the
interviewing team. This can be done for homework.
Make sure that each student knows that they have
to say who was chosen and describe briefly the
strengths of the candidate.
Writing file, page 126
Resource bank: Writing (page 204)
16